Electronic States of Human Minds

Oswin

From what she gathered, the Rybek was pretty much the king. The Arbek was the court-appointed chief inventor, or something like that. She didn't know much about monarchies (all human monarchies had been abolished long before she had been born in 5096), but that was what she gathered. This Rybek had skin even more pale and glowy, eyes even more bulbous, white and fishy, than the Arbek. They were thrown down in front of him in the throne-room though, the five of them, released by their Cyberman captors. Oswin's cane rolled across the floor and she was left struggling to balance, using Nios for support, until River took pity on her and went to pick it up.

"Sorry about this," she mumbled, "Sorry I can't stand on my own." Nios, though she was annoyed by Oswin's pervasive flirting with her, wasn't all that bothered by the fact she was stuck with the responsibility of helping her. Generally, that job would go to Adam Mitchell or Clara (even Jenny when she was around), but they weren't there. She was grateful. She would have to think of some way to make it up to Nios. What sort of gift did you get a synth, though?

"The Rybek, I presume?" the Doctor said.

"You can tell by the throne," River said, "Pompous slave-drivers always have thrones."

"Cyber King had a throne…" Mickey muttered.

"Maybe I should get a throne…" Oswin said. She didn't mean to say it, she meant to think it to herself, but everybody heard and gave her a look. "What? Maybe not a throne, but… wheelchair?" she suggested.

"If you carry on like that you'll turn into Davros," the Doctor said. Well, she thought, now she was definitely going to have to get a wheelchair. One exactly like Davros's, that looked like the base of a Dalek. She thought it would be hilarious; she did so enjoy reminding the Doctor that she had been a Dalek at one point in time.

"Who have you brought in front of me, Arbek? Take them to processing where they belong, like all the stowaways," the Rybek dismissed. He was a real opulent, uh – what was the word she was looking for… fuckwit? Definitely fuckwit.

"They're not like the others," the Arbek, who had bowed when the Cybermen had brought them all into the room, said. It wasn't a very fancy room, to say it held a throne. Wasn't a very fancy throne, either, wasn't bejewelled or covered in silk or anything. It was just a big metal chair, with cushions on it for comfort. Oswin was surprised at the lack of other aliens down there, they'd just seen the two so far. "Only one of them is human."

"Then send the human to automaton processing and the others to salvage," the Rybek said indifferently.

"Wait – what's 'automaton processing'?" Mickey, the only human (if you could call a Manifest so much) asked, getting unnerved by all the Cybermen around them with their hollow eyes and electronic groans. All of them were in pain, Oswin could tell, all the time.

"What do you think happens to the people they abduct?" the Doctor said to Mickey, then turned to the Rybek, "Because that's what you're doing. Abducting them. Kidnapping and mutilating people they have no right to mutilate. Not that anybody generally has a right to mutilate somebody-"

"I mutilated your daughter," Oswin pointed out, then with her free hand she mimed stabbing, "Gouged her eyes out*." The Doctor looked at her with disapproval, and she smiled awkwardly.

"Mutilated them?" the Rybek asked.

"Of course! Turned them into these things – do you know what they are? Your 'automatons'? 'Hybrids'? Human beings! Human beings who've had their brains scooped out and put in a robot unwillingly. You're stealing people and then butchering them down here in your spaceship – what are you trying to get out of it? I saw the repairs. This ship isn't meant to be underwater. It's falling apart. Is it even space-worthy anymore?" he questioned.

"Repairing the ship is the Arbek's job," the Rybek said stiffly. Why was it just the two of them? Shouldn't the Rybek have advisors, bodyguards, some kind of envoy? He was just there, alone, on his throne. Perhaps he didn't need much protection stuck down there at the bottom of the ocean. Then again, she thought back to three months ago (three months ago today, as a matter of fact) to their trip down to Rapture, in the Deltaverse. Good luck going there without guaranteed protection.

"That's why I brought them, they hold the secret," the Arbek said, "Three of them are hybrids, as well. And that man – I don't know what he is. Organic, but different."

"Yeah, and don't try and change that," the Doctor said, "I'm not interested in having my limbs chopped off and replaced with bits of metal. No offence, Oswin."

"I'm not offended," she shrugged, "I accept that my fetish for prosthetics isn't for everyone."

"What's this about a secret?" the Doctor questioned, "You said we hold the secret – what secret?"

"You can fix the ship," the Arbek said.

"Why would we do that?" River asked.

"Because I'll have you executed if you don't," the Rybek threatened, "They we can finally leave this rock."

"So that's why you're here? You can't leave? What happened to strand you here, under the sea?" the Doctor asked, standing in front of the rest of them with River at his side. This was the first time Oswin had seen the two of them together and actually believed that they were a real couple. Sort of.

"We came after salvage," the Rybek explained, "Miscalculated the gravity. Sank into the sea."

"I'm confused – are you more of a king or more of a captain…? Because this one's basically worshipping you," Oswin said, nodding at the Arbek.

"I don't understand the difference," the Rybek said. Fair enough, she thought to herself.

"Carry on. You came after salvage."

"Our scanners picked up something interesting, the same scanners we use now to find things above worth salvaging," the Rybek explained.

"Worth salvaging? They're living people, you can't salvage them any more than you can salvage us. And we won't let you," River said very convincingly. If there was one person Oswin would want on her side in a crisis, River Song was one of them. It was funny how River had been the one to alter her programming to remove her left leg months ago in the first place. Well, not the first place. Of course the one to remove Oswin's leg in the first place had been Oswin herself.

"In the land you know as Peru," the Rybek said.

"Do you mean… Peru?" Mickey said. The Rybek glared.

"Hold on. The Cybermen. Your scanners detected them," the Doctor realised, "Is that why you came to Earth? After them?"

"Yes. An army to sell. There's a lot of money in armies, especially one so unstoppable, so easily controlled," the Rybek said.

"That's sick. They're not an army, they're a species, they've just been used by the wrong kinds of people," Nios argued.

"A species? I could get so many more credits for them if I were to market them as a species. All sorts of people would pay to own an entire species," he mused, "Arbek – make a note of that, for when we leave. Species."

"You're keeping them in pain!" Nios shouted.

"They were in pain already. They're vulnerable to emotions. All we did was prey on it," he said, "Told them we can make it stop if they do what we say. They'd do anything for that possibility. It's remarkable how they're still running."

"That's wrong," Nios said, "You can't exploit them. They're living things."

"They're nothing. They're just strong and stupid. Livestock."

"They deserve to live just like anybody else."

"Are you sure they're alive? Just because they have a brain…" the Rybek said, "They don't look alive to me. They look empty." Nios was just getting more and more furious. This was, unfortunately, not one of those times where the big-man-in-charge was actually reasonable, where he might just let the Cybermen go into their custody in exchange for a trip home. No. He was a profiteering trespasser, a common criminal. "That's why it's so easy to lie to them. I'm talking about it right in front of them and they haven't even realised."

"How long have you been down here?" the Doctor asked, cutting of Nios's spiel. It should be clear to her that she wasn't going to get through to these aliens, whatever race they were.

"A hundred solar years," the Arbek said.

"A hundred years? And you can't fix the ship? You're barely even managing to maintain it!" he mocked, "How many of you are there? You're the only two I've seen so far, and this ship isn't exactly big."

"The two of us," the Rybek said.

"Two of you? Then this is practically a Cyberman ship," River said, "They could overthrow you in the blink of an eye if someone motivated them to do so." She cast a very telling look in Oswin's direction then, and Oswin, who was thinking, sank back into the shadows. She had a problem to work out in her head, a complicated one, one she would generally like to write things down to solve.

"You'd have no power if they seized the means of production," Nios said. River scoffed.

"You sound like Thirteen," she remarked.

"There were more," the Rybek told them, "They perished."

"You probably killed them to increase your share of the haul from your 'salvage,'" River said. Neither the Rybek nor the Arbek denied this, and River indicated the latter as she continued speaking to the Rybek, "In fact – as soon as he gets this ship to lift off, you'll kill him, as well, I bet. Once you don't need him anymore."

"So there's two of you, and hundreds of them? And the only reason they do what you say is because they're in pain," the Doctor reiterated, "It's sick. Twisted."

"Coming from the man trying to argue they didn't have any sort of right to autonomy not long ago," Nios snapped.

"Their autonomy depends. On how clever people are," he said, a sentence directed discreetly at Oswin. God – didn't he understand she was already trying to figure out how to fix it? Trying to do something nobody else had ever done before wasn't easy. Not when she didn't even know how morally viable it all was…

"If you don't want us here, you'll have to help us leave. It's not like you can escape the ship, either."

"No, I suppose not. Even for Aquaman over there, the pressure would kill him," Nine said, nodding at Mickey.

"Aquaman was never affected by depth pressure," Mickey said.

"It was a joke, Ricky. Don't think about it too hard and get over it," the Doctor said.

"With the salvage we got last week from one of your military vessels we'll be able to fly away in a matter of weeks. Days if we have you to help us. Which you will, or I'll tell the automatons – or Cybermen, as you call them – to kill you. Simple," the Rybek threatened. He was almost right. They didn't have the TARDIS, no quick escape that way; they'd left it on the shore when they'd picked up Adam's now-defunct yacht.

"So you sit here in your broken spaceship sucking down ships and planes to give yourself what you need to get away," Nine said, "Killing people in the process and running a society based on slavery, with just the two of you. I can't abide by that. And I'm not sure I want to help you."

"One of you will help us eventually," the Arbek said, "You'll have to. More people will die if you don't than if you do."

Oswin cleared her throat to get their attention, "I could fix your ship. Easily. In an hour or so, probably. I assume it's just your boosters that are broken, and the reason you can't do anything about it is – again – because of the pressure outside. And the water. Maybe you do look like fish, but you're not marine life. Neither are these Cybermen. I could throw together a submarine from the technological goldmine you have down here, a few deep-sea diving suits for your Cybermen. Have it done in no time at all. Then you'll be on your way. With us."

"At least one of you is sane," the Rybek noted. All four of her crewmates laughed out loud at hearing somebody refer to Oswin as 'sane.'

"She's far from that…" River muttered.

"That's the thing though, isn't it? We're all even more intriguing than the Cybermen are. More advanced, cleverer – you'd get a fortune trying to sell us on the black market. Smartest girl in the universe, first conscious synthetic, robotic professor of archaeology, the last of the Time Lords," then Oswin paused, "And …Mickey..."

"What are you doing?" Nios hissed at her.

"Being clever," she whispered back, fidgeting with her cane. At least, it looked like she was fidgeting. She was doing far more than that. As she'd said to the Doctor earlier, it was all fitted out with tricks and gadgets. She was like a disabled version of Batman, and just as broody. "We actually have a ship of our own, a spaceship – not here, obviously. Not anywhere near here. Completely inaccessible. But sometimes we pick up salvage, too. I was salvage. Nios here, she was salvage. We're all just flotsam and jetsam, really. But I'll tell you something good the Doctor here found a long time ago on a desolate spaceship**; it was called a 'Stomb.' Well, that's what I called it. Short for 'static bomb.' This sort of spherical device that emitted a cranial electromagnetic pulse, destroyed brainstems and the like. Only affected living things.

"So then, I took that technology and I modified it into stun guns. These really clever things that alter themselves after scanning the species you're aiming at to emit just the right level of electricity to knock them unconscious. We run into a lot of hostile aliens, it's good to have preventative measures. Not that anybody ever uses those guns I made anymore, because I'm significantly underappreciated sometimes…" she was getting off-track, "…Anyway. The technology's still around. I've got some of it here with me, in this very special cane I need to be able to walk." When she lifted the cane with her right hand, she grabbed hold of Nios's shoulder with her left in order to keep herself balanced. "Do you want me to demonstrate how it works?" And then, with her thumb, she pushed down on the button on top of it. When she had been fidgeting with the cane, she had actually been altering the settings, making the Stomb-derived technology identify the new aliens for incapacitation. Being as all the Cybermen had human brains, they all went unaffected, as well.

It worked quite nastily. Both the Rybek and the Arbek screamed as blood began to trickle from their ears, then they both fell. The Arbek was a crumpled mess on the floor, the Rybek slumped down in the industrial-looking throne. Seeing the blood, Oswin bit her lip, anxious, as Mickey went to check the Arbek's pulse.

"Uh… his heart's beating, but I don't know if it's supposed to be going this fast…"

"I'll be fine, Oswin wouldn't make the mistake of murdering someone by accident," the Doctor said. He seemed to have more faith in her than she had in herself – murdering someone by accident seemed exactly like something she might do, to be honest. "Tell me you've figured out a way to do what she wants," he asked Oswin, nodding at Nios.

"You mean 'fix' the Cybermen," Oswin said. That was what she'd been trying to work out.

"You can't do that," Mickey said, "You should just leave them down here to rot, where they can't hurt anybody."

"They're not hurting anyone at all," Nios argued.

"They have done in the past."

"So has every species. Look at them – they're lost. Who created them? Why?"

"John Lumic," Mickey said, "Rich old tycoon. Genius. Terminally ill. Wanted to find a way to live forever, so he built them. He wanted to use them to replace the whole human race and make them immortal and unstoppable."

"So, once, his intentions were good?" Nios put to Mickey.

"People aren't meant to live forever. They're monsters. They can't live with themselves."

"It's a problem of disassociation," Oswin finally chimed in with their arguments, "People are dangerous when they're made aware. That was why Nios killed those people when she became conscious. It's why I finally lost my mind when I was converted into a Dalek." Yes, truthfully, she had been off the rails years before all that had happened, but clever as she was, she was still so crazy the Daleks of all things had chained her up and locked her in a cell on her own. "And the Doctor left me. Nios was on her own. I bet you didn't even try to help the Cybermen last time. They're all victims. Nios is right. Everything that makes them a person, in their mind, is still there. If you say they're not people, you're saying I'm not a person, and Nios isn't a person, and River isn't a person."

"So you have to stop them disassociating. Otherwise they die," the Doctor said, then he admitted, "I wouldn't be able to do it alone."

"I'm not sure I can do it alone," Oswin said.

"You're a technopath," Nios pointed out to Mickey, "Can't you feel their pain? Listen to them groaning, they're suffering. Any human could become a murderer or a soldier in the right circumstances, how are they any different? Following a flawed ideology isn't their fault if they've only ever heard the one voice. They need to hear their own voices again."

"And if you do that, they'll die."

"Only because nobody's ever tried to make sure they don't!" she protested.

"I don't know," Oswin said.

"Can you do it?" Nios implored.

"…Hypothetically, yes… if I used you as a computer for extra processing power," Oswin said, "Which wouldn't damage you, or anything, don't worry, I'd just-"

"Do it. Use me. I don't mind."

"But it's not about you, it's about them. What gives me the right? I'm not god. I can't… create a whole species," she said, "I have no right to go poking around in their heads, changing what it means to be human. Who knows what they'd be? Who they'd be? They probably won't be exactly who they were before."

"They'd be something new. Is that so bad? If they're finally at peace? They're lost souls. They need a home. You're the only one who's intelligent enough to help them, that means you have to help them. It's your duty. You can't make things worse than they already are."

"What if I killed them?" Oswin fretted, "What if they still can't cope, even if I rewrite their programming, put in blocks and change the way they feel things?"

"They'll help each other. And they can stay down here, have their own city, as long as they keep the leaks out," Nios said, then she cast a hateful look at the Rybek and the Arbek, "And we take those two back to whatever dump they came from."

"It's not a bad idea," River interrupted, "Maybe it would work? They'd be safe, everybody else would be safe – as long as we made sure they give us back whatever it was they stole from the CIA last week. And your boyfriend's yacht, of course." Yeah, if there was anything left of it, she thought bitterly.

"Then… I'll do it. I'll try to make them people again." Nios hugged her.

*chapter 638

**chapter 589